Month: December 2006

This is the story of George Vaccaro, a Verizon customer who recently had a very interesting encounter with Verizon’s billing department.

The bulk of the story is that George was quoted 0.002 cents per KB for data charges he would incur during a trip to Canada. After getting confirmation of this value from several Verizon reps, George made sure that this quote was saved within his file. Fast forward to a couple of days ago, George received a bill of 100 times what he was quoted for. Now, you might be thinking, hey, 100 times?, maybe they meant to say 0.002 dollars per KB instead of cents per KB? and you would be right, that is what George thought as well. However, as this humorous phone conversation with supervisors and managers at Verizon shows, they did not mean 0.002 dollars, they meant 0.002 cents per KB. So what is going on here? Is Verizon hiring people without elementary level education to do their billing? Is it really a “difference of opinion” as Verizon’s floor manager so insightfully put it (not!)?

After yet another confirmation of their quote through e-mail and their “generous” offering of halving his bill (I’m surprised they knew how to divide by 2), one can only guess what else is going on in that organization’s billing department. As of right now, Verizon has yet to admit their mistake and its employees do not know what the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents is.

I have had my share of interaction with incompetence corporations like Verizon and it is time that their studpidy and blatant disrespect for the customers by upper management when they put scripted drones in the front is brought to light.
That is why kids, pay attention to your grade 4 teacher when she goes over decimals and fractions, specially when she uses currency as an example! It may come in handy one day.